Caryn Ann Harlos, the elected secretary of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC)—the national governing board of the Libertarian Party (L.P.)—filed a lawsuit last week against the LNC and its elected chair, Angela McArdle, for being disqualifyingly disloyal to the country's third-largest political party.
Harlos charged in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that McArdle, who was reelected this May to a second two-year term as chair, "has violated her fundamental fiduciary duties and duties of loyalty to…the Libertarian Party…through self-dealing, divided loyalties, outright violations of core principles of the Party, diversion of Party assets to unrelated third-parties, misuse of Party assets, the ordering payments of tens of thousands of the Party's funds in self-interested transactions, and the failure to disclose and/or to timely disclose clear conflicts."
The legal action, known as a "derivative suit" (in which a member of a corporation sues a corporation's officers legally on behalf of that corporation), seeks to remove the chair from office "as a last resort to stop McArdle before her continued actions ultimately destroy the Libertarian Party."
McArdle's enumerated derelictions include inviting "another political party's presidential candidate [Republican Donald Trump]…to hold a rally prior to the nomination of the Libertarian candidate [at the party's nominating convention] and, in effect, to mock the idea of even running a Libertarian ticket at all."
Harlos' suit grants that the Trump invitation "may have been described as simply giving him a forum to hear the Party's views," but that McArdle's "future actions make that interpretation impossible, including a mocking 'endorsement video' for the Party's official candidates in which she wore a clown nose and explicitly stated that the purpose of her endorsement and support was to make sure that [President Joe] Biden (the Democrat nominee at the time) was not re-elected."
McArdle, claims Harlos, has objectively supported competing candidates such as Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., thus breaching "her fiduciary duty to act in good faith to the LNC by failing to zealously maintain ballot access to Libertarian Party candidates across the country." McArdle, Harlos also charges, worked on such non-L.P. events as this year's "Rage Against the War Machine" and "Rescue the Republic—Join the Resistance" rallies (the latter of which Harlos characterized as objectively pro-Trump), without any "internal accounting of all of the Party resources used."
Meanwhile, the nuts and bolts party business was neglected, the suit alleges. For instance: Instead of sending Certificates of Nomination for presidential nominee Chase Oliver to state secretaries of state, to ensure that the L.P. nominee appeared on official ballots, McArdle ordered them sent instead only to state party chairs, "despite the known issues of absent or unknown state chairs and lack of proper mailing addresses."
The suit also accuses McArdle of self-dealing by hiring "her life partner and father of her son, Austin Padgett, as a Fundraising Director." Federal Election Committee reports for December 2023 and January 2024 show that the L.P. paid Padgett more than $12,000, which Harlos contends flowed directly into McArdle's household.
These actions, Harlos' suit alleges, have led to a "mass exodus of members" and "caused the Party to suffer some of the lowest fundraising in decades."
The L.P.'s total cash reserve adequacy for August, the last month for which financial figures have been made public, was around half of what it was two years ago. General fundraising intake that month was $68,854, the lowest all year, and 27 percent less than in April 2022, the last month before McArdle took office. (These numbers do not include the party's portion of a highly unusual joint fundraising committee with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,'s presidential campaign. According to a post on the LNC's public business list earlier this month, the party has collected at least $139,000 from this fund.)
In a more apples-to-apples fundraising comparison with the last presidential election year, August 2020 saw the party bring in general fundraising more than twice as much as August 2024: $182,456. Party membership has also plummeted under McArdle's management, with sustaining member numbers down about one-quarter.
McArdle's comment on Harlos' suit, provided to Reason via L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams, was, in its entirety: "Have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons? Imagine sitting down to play Dungeons & Dragons with a group of people and a few of the players are new and don't know how to play the game. They begin to squabble with the Dungeon Master and so someone calls a timeout and decides to put together a rules committee to explain how to play the game. Gradually, the real game is abandoned, and the singular focus becomes the rules committee. Each weekend, the players gather together to play the rules instead of the game. That is the crux of this litigation."
Veritas Law Firm, which is representing Harlos, also assisted former LNC member Beth Vest in an earlier such lawsuit filed in May. Christopher LaFon of Veritas says in an email that the parties may consolidate the two suits moving forward, though nothing will go to trial until the second half of 2025.
"The actions alleged in these suits are not garden-variety skimming," LaFon says, "but, instead, constitute efforts to actively subvert a national political party to support its electoral opponents and siphoning its financial resources into the pockets of outside organizations and personal cronies. Our clients believe that the wrongdoing officer's actions are shocking and would be shocked if a court, once hearing the evidence, allowed the wrongdoing officer to continue in her position."
Harlos' suit references an ongoing attempt on the LNC's part to remove her from office. The LNC on October 6 preferred charges against the secretary, and suspended her from her duties pending a hearing next month.
The charges against Harlos include the "gross misconduct" of making sure that party presidential nominee Chase Oliver was on the Colorado ballot, despite the state affiliate wishing to nominate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., instead. Harlos' ensuring the L.P.'s nominee made the Colorado ballot, the charges against Harlos allege, "exposed the Libertarian National Committee to litigation" of an unspecified nature or provenance.
Harlos, in a pair of phone interviews over the past week, is quite confident that she will indeed be booted. "This is a predetermined outcome," she says. "I know how this group works, because I used to be in the group." (Harlos is referring to the L.P.'s Mises Caucus faction, which supports McArdle and has controlled the national party since 2022.) Harlos insists her duty to the delegates to get their selected candidate on the ballot in Colorado supersedes any order McArdle gave to the contrary.
While a source close to the L.P. believes McArdle hopes to deprive Harlos of legal standing by removing her from office, according to LaFon: "As long as the director had standing at the time of the behavior alleged in the complaint, i.e., was an officer or director when they made the claim, the courts will resolve that complaint, even if the director has completed their term of office or is no longer on the board. The law prevents a wrongdoing leader from making a derivative lawsuit go away by retaliating against the director who brought the lawsuit and ousting him or her."
"It's going to happen. They are going to remove me," Harlos says. "But removal for putting our candidate on the ballot, that is such dirty, dirty politics."
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